6 iconic jobs that are going out of fashion

The Avon Lady isn’t the only one who’s no longer calling — or making fewer calls.

Avon
AVP, +6.23%
, one of the world’s largest direct-to-consumer sellers, on Thursday reported an decline in quarterly revenue, with fewer “Avon Ladies” going door-to-door and women more likely to buy their beauty products elsewhere. The company posted a loss of $147 million in the first quarter, less than the $168 million loss reported a year earlier. Sheri McCoy, chief executive officer of Avon Products Inc. remained upbeat. “Despite continued foreign exchange pressure, I’m really impressed with how well our teams in market are managing in this volatile environment,” she said in a statement.

Once upon a time — about two decades ago — it was considered a rite of passage to walk into a travel agent’s office, flip through some glossy brochures, and talk to an agent about all the exotic places you could visit. Today, most people just check travel websites like Expedia, Hotwire, Orbitz or Jetsetter. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts a 12% decline in travel agents from 73,000 in 2012 to 64,400 in 2022; to put that in context, the average growth rate for all occupations is 11%, and it’s down from 105,300 in 2008. Job prospects should be best for travel agents who specialize in specific destinations or groups with special interests or agents for corporate travelers.

People no longer argue about facts at dinner parties — these days, they just whip out their phones. After 244 years selling print editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica, the company stopped selling them in 2012. “The first edition, published between 1768 and 1771 in Edinburgh, Scotland, consisted of 100 parts, or ‘fascicles,’ that were issued serially and bound into three volumes,” according to Britannica.com, the company’s website. But door-to-door salesmen were retired two decades ago when Encyclopædia Britannica laid off its entire sales force in the U.S. and Canada after 60 years of selling door-to-door.

There are fewer toasters, radios, compact disc and video players to fix these days and, if something breaks, people often upgrade, says Steve Langerud, workplace consultant and principal of Steve Langerud & Associates in Grinnell, Iowa. “Some of the jobs that were once staples of communities are going away as our tastes change,” he says. “Things that need fixing or can be fixed are quickly disappearing and along with them the opportunities to own a small business.” Jobs in recordable media manufacturing — including audio and video tapes, compact discs and DVDs — declined by more than 10% from 2010 to 2015, according to industry researcher IBISWorld.

Stevens /Topical Press Agency/Getty Images15th July 1946: The international exchange in the Faraday Building, Queen Victoria Street, London

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Switchboard and telephone operators

“This was a huge industry largely dominated by female workers in the 1960s and 1980s,” says Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist at jobs site Glassdoor. They even inspired a British television show, “The Hello Girls,” set in the 1950s. But “today, automated phone trees have totally replaced the industry,” says Chamberlain. Public services and first responders and other companies still need people to man their phone lines, but the number of switchboard operator jobs, including answering services, has fallen by 44% from 194,980 in 2005 to around 108,890 in May of last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

U.S. Postal Service workers are among those with the fastest declining jobs. Jobs for postal service clerks are expected to fall by 32% from 66,900 in 2012 to 45,700 in 2022, the BLS said. Jobs for postal service mail sorters, processors, and processing machine operators are also expected to plummet by 30% from 129,600 jobs in 2012 to 91,000 in 2022. The U.S. Postal Service reported a $5.5 billion loss for fiscal 2014. “Unless legislation reforms the retiree health care benefits program, the Postal Service will likely be forced to default on its prefunding obligations in 2015 and 2016,” the group said last November.

U.S. Postal Service workers are among those with the fastest declining jobs. Jobs for postal service clerks are expected to fall by 32% from 66,900 in 2012 to 45,700 in 2022, the BLS said. Jobs for postal service mail sorters, processors, and processing machine operators are also expected to plummet by 30% from 129,600 jobs in 2012 to 91,000 in 2022. The U.S. Postal Service reported a $5.5 billion loss for fiscal 2014. “Unless legislation reforms the retiree health care benefits program, the Postal Service will likely be forced to default on its prefunding obligations in 2015 and 2016,” the group said last November.

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